Sunday, April 24, 2011

Robert Pattinson: “Generally, what I think is cool is what everyone else hates”

Call me crazy, but I’ve begun to adore Robert Pattinson. Not his acting – never his acting. But if the boy could just have a job where he sat around giving interviews, he would be one of the best performers out there. His interviews are lovely – they’re funny, self-deprecating, sweet, humble, kind, silly, interesting and cool. He really is a lovely young man. Hopefully, his acting will get better, but that’s a conversation for another time. Anyhoodle, Sparkles covers the new issue of Entertainment Weekly, with Reese Witherspoon, all for advanced promotion for Water for Elephants. Reese is barely interviewed in the piece, though – it’s pretty much all Sparkles, all the time. I just read the whole piece (here, at one of Sparkles’ many fansites, where they transcribed the whole thing), and he really had me laughing and smiling. Lovely boy. Here are some highlights from the piece:

Sparkles on his long-term career: “You can never really predict what an audience wants or how to maintain a career… other than doing what you think is cool.” But, Pattinson laughs, “Generally, what I think is cool is what everyone else hates.”

Sparkles on Breaking Dawn: “There’s some interesting and weird stuff going on — really very, very, very strange. It’s great. For a big mainstream movie, it’s the most obscure story line and really outside the box. It’s a horror movie. I’ve seen a few bits, and I just can’t see how it’s going to be PG-13. . . unless they cut everything out.”

Sparkles on the contact lenses he’s had to wear to play Edward: “My God, I’ll be glad to see the last of those,” he says. “I actually want to get some kind of plastic explosive. I want to reanimate them into something so I can kill them. It’s so embarrassing for me — after so many years, it’s still a process every single morning. Everybody else has figured out how to do it, and then there’s two people holding me down because I can’t do it myself.”

Sparkles on a role he‘d like: “I’d love to play a big fat person.”

On working with Reese: “There’s something about her. She’s just this genuinely nice person. I don’t know if she puts an effort into creating a nice aura, but her mood dissipates over the whole set. It was a completely different environment from when she wasn’t there. All the kids and the animals were just drawn to her. It made it incredibly easy to do my part — all my reaction shots are just watching her work brilliantly. She’s really cool and she’s just. . . never, ever annoying. God, that’s the worst description, isn’t it?”

More on Reese, whether she remembered him from working together on Vanity Fair: “Yeah, completely. No, actually, I don’t know what I’m talking about, not really. I only worked with her for two days. But she was lovely to me, I remember that. I didn’t know what I was doing. I was freaking out. It’s pretty much the only time I’ve forgotten my lines, and it scarred me so much I’ve never let it happen again. We did a scene where she cries, and we started doing the scene and immediately there were tears…and I couldn’t remember a single thing in my head. And then they say, “Cut” and she wasn’t crying anymore. I was like, “How are you doing that? That isn’t fair. I want to be able to do that!”

On becoming more confident: “The tiredness helps as well. I’m just so constantly clouded in self-consciousness all the time because I didn’t grow up as a very dramatic kid. I did this movie called Bel Ami at the beginning of the year, and we did a lot of rehearsals, and we were doing all this body language stuff, and I was so embarrassed doing it in front of other actors. And they were so comfortable with it! I felt like the biggest moron ever…I was watching the other actors- the director would be like, “Just run around screaming!” And I’d go, “Um, no!” [Laughs] People would take off screaming, and they were loving it! I was like, “But how can you love that?” I would love to love that. I would love to revel in my own physicality. I just feel like I’d trip over my own feet.”

On losing weight for David Cronenburgs Cosmopolis: “Yes, I’m so excited, and I’m freaking out. I have no prep time, and it’s a Don DeLillo book with semi-obscure dialogue, and I have to change my body shape quite a bit. I’m playing one of those masters-of-the-universe types, and I have to have about 6 percent body fat… which means I need to lose about 70 percent. [Laughs] If I could just cut out beer, that’s my one thing. At the beginning of [Breaking Dawn] I had to be really buff because I had to have my shirt off. And when I start [getting fit], I just go crazy about it. It’s like the only thing I can talk about to anyone. So I was like, “I’m going to keep this up the whole time, so for whatever movie I do afterwards I’m going to be so buff.” And then literally one day after my last shirt off scene I started being all [mimics eating voraciously] nom, nom, nom. And I didn’t realise I had one more [shirt off] scene, and you can see it in one of them- I’m clearly [exaggeratedly sucks in his stomach and cheeks].”

Sparkles on potentially doing another franchise: “I would. But I’d want to have more input. The only horrible thing about being part of a franchise..well, not horrible..no, it is horrible…is that the bigger and bigger you get, it’s quite difficult to break out of stuff. When you’ve been playing the same part, you can’t suddenly start playing it differently. It takes away a little bit of the creative kind of..urge.”

Sparkles on life after Twilight: “It’s funny how it’s ending in 2012. This is how the world will end. But, um, I don’t know. I think most of people’s recognition is based on the magazines and stuff. All the gossip stories won’t work— they’re always combined with Twilight, so once that’s done and it can’t be combined with the promotion of the film, I think it will end. Because I have an obscenely boring life.”

Isn’t he funny? He should be doing comedies, which the interviewer actually brought up. Sparkles says that he’s been offered some comedy scripts, but he’s turned them down because they’re just too bizarre and off the map. I’m not saying he should make a romantic comedy (God no), but he should definitely try to find something smart and dialogue-heavy. I hate to say it, but I bet he would be brilliant in a Woody Allen movie. He and Woody have the same kind of neurotic, OCD comedic skills that would mesh nicely.

Also: “Generally, what I think is cool is what everyone else hates.” K-Stew?